The Bleeding Arrow ::An Original Story::
by Nonexistant Sandcastle
Summary: Nora Creed has been found guilty of over a dozen crimes by the time she was fifteen but now finds herself among a new race of monsters, and also the Biters. While the dead propose an inconvenience, it's the living that Nora has always known to be the real threat. Finally, the world sees the monsters that Nora's only seen in her imagination. But, is she ready to finally face them?
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

To say the world fell into chaos would be a complete and total lie. The world was anything but orderly and perfect to begin with, so to say that things are now the opposite is bullshit. People killed people every day for ridiculous reasons. Some killed for money, some for drugs, and some because they just damn well felt like it. People are still killing people. Nothing's changed.

Okay, so maybe _some_ things have changed. People are no longer killing over money, since it's worth absolutely nothing now. People are still killing for drugs, technically, but for better reasons. I'm talking about ibuprofen and antibiotics and things like that. Soccer-mom type drugs. As for fun, I'm sure there are a few psychos out there getting giddy off slicing throats. Nowadays, it's not uncommon for someone to lose their mind. I almost wish I had. Maybe then dealing with everything would be easier. The thing is, though, you _have_ to be willing to kill someone in order to survive. I don't care how good of a person you think you are. If you hesitate, you will die. If you think too much, you will die. Survival leaves no room for morality. You either kill or get killed. That's how things are right now, and that's probably how they'll always be from now on.

It all happened so fast. One minute, you're in a cell at the Newport City Corrections Facility for Minors and the next thing, the alarm goes off and you watch as people eat other people. Later you learn that those people weren't _really_ people. They were corpses. I heard a few people refer to them as Biters. They used to be people because they used to be alive. Then post-mortem they rose and hungered for any living thing they could get their teeth into. But if I've learned anything over the past few years, it's that the real monsters have always been, and always will be, the living.

The first winter was the hardest. It got so cold, and most of the houses and buildings had broken windows and no way of keeping even the faintest feeling of warmth inside. During the first snowstorm, I was somewhere in Connecticut. I was in a small abandoned town when I found an old furniture store. It was tiny, probably owned by one of the locals. The sign on top said "Larry's Furniture Store". The window was dusty, but to my luck, not broken. Before picking the front door lock, I knocked on the glass and ran behind a car. Either the building was locked to keep degenerates like myself out, or keep Biters in. The silence lingered for a few minutes, and then I finally picked the lock and went inside. I always carried my lock picking kit with me, it was as essential to my survival as food or water. I locked the door behind me to prevent anyone else from coming in. I brushed the snow off my shoulders and hair as I walked around. I found an old floral couch in the back with plastic seat covers. While it was the ugliest piece of furniture in the place it was the cleanest and had almost zero traces of dust upon removal of the plastic cover. I was about to sit down when I heard scratching behind a door, followed by the groans of the dead. I slowly pulled out my hunting knife and readied myself for the attack. I slowly turned the doorknob, which surprisingly wasn't locked. I quickly opened the door and stood back. A biter came out and fell face first to the floor. One stab to the head was all it took. I flipped it over to get a look, and there was a nametag that said "Larry". Well, that certainly solved _that_ mystery didn't it?

There were no other doors or hidden rooms in the place, so I finally decided to take a break. I found a vending machine and a cooler of water, so I stocked up and headed to the ugly couch. I filled my backpack with candy, granola bars, and filled up two bottles with water. The place seemed perfect to me, despite the dust and really out of date furniture. I wondered what the date was. I tried to figure out how long the winter would continue to last, but it was useless. Winter was always the longest season, and it would still be cold for another month or two after. I lied down on my back, staring at the ceiling as I tried to figure out the date. It was no longer December, I was sure, but it didn't seem like it was February quite yet. I tried thinking of the amount of snowstorms that could be left, and how I could safely travel in the cold without getting caught outside in one of them. I dozed off before I could really make any progress, with a half-eaten Hershey bar in my hand.

When I woke up the next morning, the snow had stopped. I got up and walked towards the window. Everything was quiet, no Biters or humans anywhere. I went back to my couch and sat down. I took off my jacket for a minute, and rolled up my sleeve. The store was still cold, but it beat the frozen hell that was outside. I took off the bandage that covered the deep cut on my arm, and the bleeding had stopped. However, without stitches, it would probably bleed again and get infected. I had received it a few days before, but couldn't find a moment's peace to stich the sucker up. I had a small box of medical supplies in my backpack. I had the proper thread, the knife to cut the thread, but no needle.

"Damn it," I hissed, rummaging through my backpack in case the little shithead fell out. No luck. It them dawned on me that I was in a furniture store that probably contained such a piece of equipment to fix small tears on the displayed furniture. Except _my_ couch, of course, because I doubt that anyone ever came near the damn thing. I walked towards a desk in the back and, hallelujah, I found a pack of needles.

"You have _got_ to be shitting me right now," I said, picking up the small package. The smallest needle would do the trick, but it was still larger than what I'd prefer. I also found a small piece of sample leather, which I grabbed from the desk as well. I went back to my couch, prepared my arm and the thread, and put the piece of leather in my mouth. I knew that the procedure was going to hurt like a bitch, so I had to prepare myself.

Not gonna lie, I cried a bit. I had to focus on the task at hand through the tears, because one small slip up and I was going to be in some serious shit. During the stitching, I threw out curse words that I didn't even know I knew. I probably made some up too, because the selection of curse words that I already had was not enough. After fixing my arm, I fell back asleep on the couch with the hopes that I would wake up and some magical fairy would come by and make the pain go away. Sad to say, but no fairy came that day. The pain was still there. And then some.


	2. Chapter 2

When I was six years old, I asked for a bicycle for Christmas. I remember the exact one I wanted, which I saw in a shop window everyday on my way home from school on the bus. It was bright red with red streamers on the handles, and a small basket in the front. I had this idea that I could fit everything I needed to in that little basket and ride wherever I wanted to. I thought I could travel the world on that little red bike. I thought I could leave my home behind and find a better life somewhere far away where no one knew my name or who I was. On the little red bike I wouldn't be Nora or "poor Ted Creed's kid". Spoiler alert, I didn't get the red bicycle. What I got instead were a toothbrush and a pack of Oreos.I don't know why I dreamt of the red bicycle during my third night in the furniture store. In my dream I was riding towards someone, I don't remember who it was. Behind me, of course, were biters. I was six years old again, and I felt my pigtails bobbing around while all I could do was peddle and peddle. My chest was tight and I couldn't breathe. I thought I was going to die on that goddamn bike.

I'm not sure if it was the pain or the exhaustion from crying that put me out and on the path to the red bicycle dream, but all I could recall was chewing into old leather one minute and then waking up with blood on my hands on the ugly couch some time later. My arm was incredibly sore, but the deed was done and I was not going to die that day. Well, I wasn't sure of that completely but I knew that the impending infection on my arm would not be the cause of my demise. It was possible, however, that I could have been attacked by a wild coyote or perhaps I would trip and fall off of a cliff. What a way to go, right? How pathetic would it have really been if I died from a god damn cut on my arm instead. The great tragedy that was my life would have had the lamest ending. If I had died like that, I would have been happy to come back as a biter and wreak havoc on the world that shit on me for seventeen years before submerging me in yet another ocean of shit when shit went down.

Anyway, not only was my newfound couch ugly as all hell, it was also the most uncomfortable piece of furniture I've ever slept on. And I've slept on _a lot_ of weird furniture. Couches of not-really-but-kind-of-sort-of boyfriends, park benches, and of course the beds from juvie. The beds were probably the worst part of the damn correction facility. Not the food, the fights, or the hairy showers. The beds. My mom always said that a good night's rest could make even the worst of days better. Growing up, I found this to be kind of true and kind of bullshit. After a long hard day of listening to my father yelling and my mother crying while my brother shit himself because no one bothered to change him, all I wanted to do was crawl under my blankets and pretend the world didn't exist. After a long day of picking fights with other girls and throwing up stale cornbread, all I wanted was to crawl to my bunk and hit the reset button. And after a long day of stabbing Biter heads and eating some form of vegetable from a can, I wanted to lay on the ugly goddamn couch and wait for the storm outside to pass.

I was somehow able to fall back asleep for a few hours. No red bicycle in my dream this time, just blackness. I stood up slowly, feeling slightly lightheaded but rested. I checked out of the window and saw that it stopped snowing. Only an inch or so had accumulated, but it was now sunny and bright. That's New England for you, I suppose. Snowing hard as hell in a storm of perpetual misery one minute, then sunny and full of promise and hope the next. What a fucking joke.

I decided that scoping out the area soon would be a good idea. I had enough supplies to keep me going a few days longer, and if the area nearby was clear enough, I could scavenge and live in the furniture at least a week, maybe longer if I found more food. And water. Sweet, precious water. I felt my tongue dry up the more I thought about it, realizing I didn't have any water in at least a day. I rummaged through my backpack, finding a bottle and a half of water. I drank the half bottle and in that moment, water felt like sweet wine going down my throat. I wanted to open the second bottle, but I was smarter than that. That could be my last bottle for days. I had to make it last as long as possible.

Something started to smell.

"What the fuck is that? It smells like something died in here-oh, wait. Something _did_." I said, looking over at Larry. Poor guy. All he wanted to do was accomplish his sad dream of opening a tacky furniture store and paid the ultimate price. I hoped that it was worth it for him. Probably wasn't, but I felt I owed him the benefit of the doubt. After all, his store pretty much saved my life.

Burning his body wasn't an option; the smoke would attract more Biters and probably some humans too. You know, the _real_ monsters. At the sight of smoke, they'd rush in, 1 shot K.O. me, take my shit, and leave. And that would be the end of that, so no fire. I walked over to the front door of the store and unlocked it. I took a deep breath and opened the doors. Holy shit, man, it was _cold_. I rolled my sleeves down, placed a chair in front of the door to pry it open, and went to work. I grabbed poor Larry by the arms, and began dragging him across the carpet. I had to be careful because he was already mid-rotting, and I could hear his arms tearing from his shoulders. It's really a disgusting sound. It sounds like breaking apart a chicken wing, and I could hear the flesh tearing. Blood was beginning to trace along the carpet. Fucking jeez, Larry. Pain in the ass even post-mortem.

I was successfully able to drag Larry's body outside. I kicked some snow over him to hide some of him. I didn't want anyone to see a freshly killed Biter. They'd know there's a person who freshly killed said Biter, and I did not need that confrontation. Seriously, humans are scarier and more dangerous than any Biter. After covering him with snow, I heard a snarl not too far away. It wasn't an animal, but another Biter. I wasn't afraid, my knife was on me. Constantly. I kept that thing holstered to my thigh at all times. I was always ready for _something_ , I made sure of that.

I found the thing a few yards away, and holy shit the thing was ugly. Like, more ugly than a normal Biter. But man was this thing cool looking too. It was lying on the ground, its arms stretched out to grab anything that came near as it moaned and snarled " _Aagggghhhh, Aaaaagghhhh"._ Its voice was dry and coarse, like it had sandpaper stuck in its throat. The thing's vocal chords must have frozen. It moved fairly slow as well. The thing really was almost completely frozen. As it reached for me, I could see it was frozen stuck to the ground. Its flesh had begun to decay, and where its stomach met the ground, everything was melded together. The skin froze, melted, and then froze again to the snow. It was also missing an eye, which I thought was interesting. Probably a failed attempt to kill it through the face, or perform a lobotomy. Chunks of hair were hanging by icicles barely hanging on. Parts of its cheeks glistened, freshly frosted from the previous storm. I found a stick next to my foot, and I did what any teenager would do to a corpse on the ground; I poked it. Poke. Poke. Poke. If it wasn't frozen, I'm sure the thing would have gotten up and chased me. But, unfortunately, the snow and ice made the thing quite the _slow-poke_. Hah.

It had a purse next to it. I had never been above going through someone's purse, and current circumstances certainly made it practically necessary. I put my poking stick down and grabbed the purse. It was a black leather bag with a broken buckle and it was missing more than half the stones. I looked inside and found a wallet. There was $132.25 in cash. Worthless. What really got my attention, however, was the driver's license. I wiped it off. The woman in the image was beautiful. Her hair was a deep chestnut and her eyes were bright blue. For a minute, she reminded me of my mother. My mother was a lot prettier though, but this girl was definitely in the running. I read the following information: Born November 1, 1985. Height, 5'6". Weight, 120 lbs. Eye color: blue. Hair color: Brown (Not chesnut, the scoundrels at the DMV were probably jealous). Name: Nora Reddington. _Nora_.

"Hey, look at that. We share a name. Well, I'm not _Reddington._ I couldn't live with a last name as 'High Society Trust Fund Kid' as that, but we're both Nora. I'm Nora _Creed,_ but still Nora. You know, it feels weird saying my name. I haven't heard my own first name in weeks, let alone my last night. Well, Nora, it feels good to talk to you. I bet when you were alive, I would have robbed your purse anyway. I mean, look at all the-" _SLAM!_ I heard behind me just as I was conversing with my new acquaintance. _What the fuck-shit-oh god, fuck._ It wasn't a gun-shot. It was a crash. _Oh FUCK!_ , I thought as I ran back and saw as the chair I used to prop the door had snapped in half and the door which it was responsible for was closed...and locked.


End file.
